Polish Army is looking for 10,000 volunteers

The Polish Army wants to strengthen its reserve forces by training up to 10,000 volunteers, following the continued crisis in Ukraine,Polish news portal TVN 24 reported.

“I am not going to hide that we are drawing conclusions from this conflict. […] Those new local units will be train to perform tasks combining regular army and special forces routine,” Gen. Bogusław Pacek of the National Defense Academy (AON) said.

Currently the Polish Army has 100,000 professional soldiers and 20,000 vacancies in the National Reserve Forces (NSR).

The National Defense Academy by order of the Polish Ministry of Defense (MoD) prepared a plan to refine Poland’s defense system. One of the most important propositions is an increase in troop numbers by training 10,000 soldiers, who would be tasked with anti-diversion actions in case of conflict. Those units would be created in each of Poland’s 17 provinces.

This new project was criticized by the military experts as MoD is heaving troubles finding sufficient numbers of volunteers for the NSR. At the moment only half of the 20,000 vacancies are taken.

“Most people thought that the NSR would be an equivalent to US National Guard, meanwhile it has nothing to do with this kind of a unit. When I hear new ideas I don’t have a clue what it would be,” military expert Jarosław Rybak told TVN 24.